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New Post 11/28/2007 7:58 AM
User is offline rina
17 posts
9th Level Poster


Thinking outside the box 

Hi, I am writing after quite a while. I started my first project as BA, was very scared at first but with the help of this forum, I think I am able to work as BA.

& it is now that I have started realizing my weaknesses. One of my biggest weakness is not being able to think outside the box because of which I dont ask many questions. Whatever information is provided to me, I cant think beyond that. I really want to overcome this weakness.

Any thoughts...how can I do this?

 

 
New Post 11/28/2007 11:19 AM
User is offline Adrian M.
764 posts
3rd Level Poster




Re: Thinking outside the box 

Hi Rina,

First of all I wanted to commend you for recognizing your weaknesses... I meet so many business analysts who think they have it all covered.  As you progress in your career as a business analyst you should constantly assess your skills and determine which areas you need to improve upon. This is a process that never ends no matter how much knowledge or experience one has.

Back to your question....

While there are some folks who are born thinking outside the box, the rest of us need to work at it.  It's a skills that you will acquire over time.  The first thing you need to ensure is to not let the lack of skills in this area paralyze you.  Just do it!  The more you learn about the BA profession, the more you understand the specific industry/vertical domain, the more familiar you become with the systems being affect - you will be able to think out of the box.

To start here are some things that you can do:

  • Ask more general, open ended, questions such as Why is this a requirement (what is the business justification)?, How does this affect existing business processes?, How does this affect existing systems?
  • Develop a checklist to use when gathering requirements and developing solutions.  This check list could include thinks like:
    • Who are the role/stakeholders affected by a given requirement? (do all users need to have access to the given feature, etc.)
    • What business entities (things of the system) does this requirement deal with and what operations are performed on them (CRUD)?  Remember that most business and IT systems perform one of the following operations on a business entity: Create, Read, Update, Delete.  Example: If the requirement asks you to delete Account information then you may want to ask when does this information get created/entered in the first place (C),how has access to deleted it (D), who can view it (R), and what features, if any, should the system have to support these operations.
    • What existing systems and modules are being used by the company to do its work and what is the impact of the given requirement to every one of those systems?  Here you can come up with questions such as: Does this requirement impact the Billing System?, etc.
    • What major processes/operations are currently in place and does this requirement impact any of those processes?  Example: If a new piece of data needs to be collected then you  can ask questions such as: Does this new piece of data need to appear on any existing report, document, query search?  Does this piece of data need to be send to other systems?  Do any of the existing processes need to validate this piece of data?
    • Are there other requirements which deal with the same business entity, stakeholder, etc.?  Check to ensure there are no discrepancies/contradictions with the existing requirements. 
  • Talk to other team members and ask them:  "Is there anything else that I need to consider?", "Did I miss any important aspect?".  Existing team members (analysis, developers, QA analysts, stakeholders, users) can give you great insights.  When you get this feedback - evaluate if there is anything else that you can add to your checklist so that you can come up with this on your own in the future.
  • Consider improving your critical thinking and problem solving skills by reading a book and/or taking a course that deals with this topic.

Hope this helps!

Best regards,

- Adrian


Adrian Marchis
Business Analyst Community Blog - Post your thoughts!
 
New Post 11/29/2007 8:35 AM
User is offline Chris Adams
323 posts
5th Level Poster






Re: Thinking outside the box 

 rina wrote

Hi, I am writing after quite a while. I started my first project as BA, was very scared at first but with the help of this forum, I think I am able to work as BA.

& it is now that I have started realizing my weaknesses. One of my biggest weakness is not being able to think outside the box because of which I dont ask many questions. Whatever information is provided to me, I cant think beyond that. I really want to overcome this weakness.

Any thoughts...how can I do this?

Rina,

 

Adrian gave you some great advice.  I agree, some people are more naturally out-of-the-box thinkers.  But for those of us who aren't, or even if we are but want to improve further, there are two major approaches that I use.

 

The first is a "tools" approach.  By this I mean exactly what Adrian outlined.  He listed a few "tools" that you can have on hand to help you.  Take his advice and apply a simple name to it so that you have a list in your head of approaches that you can use at any time.

  1. CRUD approach (See Adrian's explanation)
  2. Who, What, When, Where, Why, How (fairly self explanatory)
  3. Why-Why-Why (I list this separately because the Why question is so powerful.  Ask why over and over again until you have identified a root requirement. Think of yourself as an inquisitive 4 year old who asks why to every answer they give you)

I'm sure we can come up with a great deal of other tools like these.

 

The second approach is more deals more with retraining your mind to actually think differently.  This is not nearly as checklist driven. I call like to call it the "Blank Slate" approach or "The Void" (these are my names, not some fancy industry jargon).  First, take a moment to realize that every time someone tells you something you make a great deal of assumptions.

 

Example)

 

Chris says: "I have a box"

 

You may think or picture the following:

  1. Chris is holding a box
  2. The box has an open top
  3. The box is brown
  4. The box is made of corrugated cardboard
  5. Chris is standing in a room with other boxes and packaging material

Everyone obviously thinks of different things and makes different assumptions, but my point is our brains fill in the details and gaps without us knowing it.  It makes stuff up.  So spend some time running through exercises in your head.  If someone says to you "I have a box" picture nothing but a white background, complete emptiness.  Then ask details about the box to begin painting the picture one attribute at a time.

  1. Is the box square?
  2. Is the box open on top?
  3. What is the box made of?
  4. What color is the box?
  5. What is in the box?
  6. What is the purpose of the box?

Now I have a decent understanding of the box, but in my head the box is floating in mid air.  I have no surroundings or setting because I didn't ask any questions about it and I didn't allow my my to fill in the white space with any guesses or assumptions.  Next, I could move on to ask about the surroundings.

 

I hope you get the point of this exercise.  After a while of doing thing you actually begin to retrain your brain.

 

Chris

 


Chris Adams
Core Member – ModernAnalyst.com
LinkedIn Profile
 
New Post 12/27/2007 12:22 PM
User is offline Tony Markos
1 posts
No Ranking


Re: Thinking outside the box 

Thinking within the box is the natural tendancy.  You need an analysis technique that prods you to think outside of the box.

Use Cases = Validation of a think within the box mentality.

Data Flow diagrams = Proding the analyst to think outside of the box.  Only by following the flow of data is the analyst actually proded to think outside of the box.

Tony Markos

 

 
New Post 1/29/2008 8:04 AM
User is offline anonymous
0 posts
No Ranking


Re: Thinking outside the box 

Rina,

Along with using the pointers that fellow BAs have provided, I never forget to ask myself this question as part of the analysis of requirements and even eliciting them to beguin with: "If I were to use this system, what would I need from it?" The systems I've helped build have been better than what the managers/SMEs initially requested because I put on the hat of the user and envisioned what would I want from this system that would make busines easier. And the business has appreciated the resulting insight. In other words, they themselves didn't think about it earlier.

Now that's not to say that we request something totally off the charts. If I'm asked to build a refrigerator, I shouldn't be envisioning a robotic arm coming out of the side of the fridge and mopping the kitchen floor. That's not outside-the-box; it's divergence from the requirement. Within the problem space of the fridge that keeps things cool in an environmentally-friendly manner, what would you as the user want from that fridge?

Good luck and congrats on the introspection!!

 
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